Worst thing that happened during a performance?

[necrofiend]

I don't really post much here but simply have to contribute to this one.

I spent a ton of time practicing the Jones Change over and over and over until I could nail it every time. So I'm sitting at my buddy's house with two friends. One gets up and goes to the kitchen so I figure what the hell. I'm fiddling with my cards and I'm like 'hey dood, check this out'. Bam. He was like...'wait wait, do that again'. So, bam. I do it again.

So now he wants me to show my other friend when he gets back. Friend B comes back into the room and friend A is like 'dood, do it'. So I go to perform it for him and...somehow during the change the card flies outta my hand and hits him. Needless to say, even though it was only two friends (the friend I showed first watches my effects all the time to help me with my performance and angles and whatnot) it was embarrassing.

Ah well

 

[Will.Guy]

I was at a festival hosted at an old "historic" greenhouse.

I thought it would be the perfect place to do a card through window.

Turns out the "historic" glass is real thin...

 

[LuseifHo]

nothing as bad as what i read has happened to me. only until recently i guess.

I was doing the "serious" half of my 1 hour show and was finishing with Russian Roullete Spike Version. Needless to say, doing it with a homemade spike, 1 dollar cups, the brightest white spot lights, and 4 layer blind fold with short sleeves did not help. Go figure...

This one isnt acutally that bad. I was doing a prediction effect where I get people to think of a place, name, and object. I was using the one ahead principle. The audience caught on immediatly and started saying how it was done. They were all laughing and what not. The situation was I had the name of the object and person on the table while a written place was on my note pad. I scrunched up the piece on the notepad and switched it with the paper with the object's piece in front of their faces. They then grabbed the two pieces on the table, one of which I had switched out. When they read the two, they found out that it contradicted their explanation, thus stillfinding it amazing : D

Although not much bad things have happened to me during my performances. I have a friend at school who is one of those 10 year old rich kids who buy everything but never practice. He took out an invisible deck (impossible to screw up right? wrong). He did the trick with the build up and what ever. But when he went to reveal, he revealed 4 different cards, one of which was the chosen card. Instead of doing some smart recover, this is what he says "never mind those, and here is your card!" he takes the 3 face up ones and pockets them. Needless to say the audience was not impressed and he expected them to look amazed. Really funny though. I was standing there smiling my butt off.

He later on tried to perform Believe for a teacher. Now this is a pretty simple trick but I find it too fumbly. He ripped off the corner and went to put it down. It took him 20 seconds just to put the piece down on the table. Needless to say, he had flashed epicly but still thought that everything was all good. He finished the effect and the teacher just stood there with his mouth open wondering whether or not he should clap or send the kid to a different school. The kid later on found me and was like "did you see that? his jaw literally dropped" "yea... yea.... i saw that.... that was...... gooooood........" I love watching these kids perform. ITS SO FUN! haha
but seriously if you guys know one of those young, rich, fat kids, follow them around and watch them perform. Its more fun than watching The Bucks perform new flourishes! not really... but still its fun.

 

[FOO:L]

but is it as fun as watching the china lecture people watch the bucks do new flourishes?

thought not. haha

 

[The Wordsmith]

Apologies won't do nuffink now, it's too late for that!

Probably not my worst fail, but the one that immediately springs to mind, would be me filming some street magic on a bad day.
"And the deck vanishes, leaving us with one card, which just happens to be...um...not your card...um...not that I knew what your card was or anything...um...have a nice day! "

And another (not exactly a fail, but amusing none the less), was when my friend did card through window at school. He launched the cards at the window, sort of missed it and sort of hit the girl sat on the computer nearby. Very luckily indeed, we knew her quite well, and she has a sense of humour. Ah, happy days.

Actually it just missed her head but it made a loud bang and she screamed in a slightly alarming way. Alarming because it was not immediatly obvious that I had not hit her. She was shrouded by a cloud of decending cards for a moment. It certainly got the attention of everyone in the room...

Well I was doing a simple mind reading trick that used the centre tear to one of my friends' uncles. I got the name. I spend ages picking out single letters from his tiny little facial movements (I told him) Finally I told him "Albert Einstein!". "No it was John Foster" says he, "a close friend of mine" I had asked him to write the name of someone close to him so I should have realised it was not going to be Einstein. I read it again later. He had written John Foster. God only knows where I got Einstein from. It was funny anyway.